The use of electronic IT services has been growing rapidly over recent years as specialized IT service providers offer services to their clients. Clients may typically access the services through use of a client application running on client computing hardware.
For example, a service provider may provide a complex, powerful, and resource intensive IT service that clients may access via a client application running on standard personal or business computers. This is particularly advantageous for the client who can access such services without having to provide and maintain the computing hardware and software required to provide the service.
In order to optimize their service offerings, service providers may offer their services to multiple clients. However, due to differences in client infrastructure architectures and functional requirements the service provider typically needs to either provide separate, customized instances of the service for each client, or needs to provide a single service which is customized to cater for multiple clients.
However, due to the relatively short shelf-life of computing devices and software applications it is common for the IT systems of the clients, the service providers, or both, to undergo upgrades and modernization on a regular basis. Such modifications may, however, be problematic for those providing and/or for those consuming IT services.